Perinatal Staff Education on Opioid Use Disorder

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, opiate use disorder (OUD) crosses all demographic areas, ethnicities, and social classes. In 2016, over 42,000 Americans died from opiate overdose with more than two million Americans having OUD. The need to care for patients with OUD has crossed all realms of nursing, including the perinatal specialty. Framed within the Iowa model of evidence-based practice, the purpose of this project was to develop a perinatal staff education program on OUD focusing on addiction as a brain disorder with care of the perinatal woman and identification and treatment of the newborn with neonatal abstinence syndrome related to OUD. Three content experts evaluated the evidence, which consisted of using a dichotomous scale (not met = 1, met = 2) to evaluate the curriculum objectives relative to the content and determining a content validity index score of the 15 item pre-/posttest using a Likert scale. Descriptive statistics were used to report the results of the curriculum plan evaluation, with a score of 2 meaning all objectives reflected the content of the curriculum while the validity index scale analysis resulted in an I-CVI of .85 indicating the questions were relevant to the objectives. Results of the curriculum evaluation and pre-/posttest item validation showed the education program to be ready for implementation. The potential impact of an increase in the nurses’ knowledge on OUD might facilitate social change through the provision of evidence-based practice within a caring environment, thus improving patient outcomes and the human condition